God Lay me Down To Sleep
by Regency
Summary: God lay me down to sleep.


Author: Regency  
  
Title: God Lay Me Down To Sleep  
  
Spoilers/season: Anything up to "A Constituency of One"  
  
Category: Drama/Angst  
  
Rating: PG-R  
  
Pairing: I don't know. Jed/Abbey maybe.  
  
Summary: God Lay Me Down To Sleep; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Keep.  
  
If I Should Die Before I wake; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Take. If I  
  
Should Live For another Day; I Pray The Lord To Guide My way.  
  
Goodbye, Amen, and Halleluiah.  
  
Author's Notes: This first few parts are to be solely from Jed's PoV.  
  
At least that is what I intend. Abbey and Zoey are still gone to New  
  
Hampshire. Everything is as is.  
  
I'll try to finish the post as soon as I hit home, but it's not a  
  
promise. I have school work due tomorrow.  
  
Be warned, this post was better until my mom leaned over the keyboard  
  
and, accidently hit the delete button teice. I lost everything amd  
  
undo was useless then.  
  
Disclaimer: I own anyone you don't recognize. Everything else is that  
  
genius, Aaron Sorkin's.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
God Lay Me Down To Sleep  
  
I pace restlessy around the Oval Office. I'm too tired to work, too wired to sleep. Even if I wasn't, I'm sure I would find no solace in the emptiness of the Residence tonight.  
  
I have billions of lives in my hands as we speak, yet the only  
  
people I really care about want nothing to do with me. Much less do  
  
they want their fate in my hands. Every step I take feels like one  
  
closer to the grave that has reached for me so eagerly for so long,  
  
it seems.  
  
In my mind's ear, the world screams for justice in the face of my  
  
many-committed sins. The dead of which their blood stains my hands or  
  
my pen, for lack of better term, plead for equal bidding. They demand  
  
that the one who took them away from their life, their youth, their  
  
loves and their children pay. That one is me.  
  
I'm not selfish enough to ask if I haven't paid enough. Is the loss of my wife and youngest child so diminshed to me you must ask? No,  
  
but the feeling is. The feelings I have felt have been at best  
  
etching, maybe litte more than empathy. The moment Abigail looked at  
  
me with such stone-cold hate and contempt and told me she blamed me I  
  
was numb to and since then. But only to that. Everything else in this  
  
self-preserving world has fallen into my lap and has proceeded to  
  
slowly crush my soul. And in all of this, the one thing I crave that  
  
I lack is sleep. Yet, everytime I close my eyes, they flash by. All  
  
of them. Every soldier, sailor, airmen, and marine. Everyone that  
  
I've sent to die; snd every one that has died or has come back as  
  
someone they never imagined they could by. A killer, a quadraplegic,  
  
a paraplegic, an amputee, an ex-prisoner-of-war. Everything they  
  
never should have been. Everything I made them be. A unbelievable  
  
number have tried to kill me afterwards...for what they've become,  
  
for what they've lost as a result.  
  
They've never succeeded. I can't decide whether that's good or not. At least I'd be asleep. There's an advantage to death. I can't help the bitter laugh that escapes.  
  
It's good I'm alone or others would worry if their President was  
  
doing so well. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't answer simply  
  
because I wouldn't realize they were talking to me. I don't feel like  
  
a president or the leader of the Free World. But that's what I do,  
  
what...who I am. I can no more separate the man from the office than  
  
one can separate the soldier from human heart.  
  
I finally see that no good can come from pacing a ditch into my  
  
Presidential Seal. I'm going to the Residence.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
I rest my head on the pillow beside Abbey's and I can still smell  
  
her here. Could it be real that she was gone already and for so long?  
  
Was it really? It was and yet my grief at that simply slides off of  
  
me like water on plastic. I feel the fight in every limb. The tips of  
  
my nerve endings snap and crackle with what only can be the self-fury  
  
I'm hiding from myself.  
  
Who am I furious with? With the wife who got tired of what this job was doing to her family and took them away from it after it was  
  
already too late? Or am I angry at myself for not realizing that no  
  
longer included me? I don't know. I don't care. I really don't. I  
  
just want to not be this...man. He has nothing. He is nothing, but a  
  
voice for various useless hidden agendas and a face and name to blame  
  
when the shit hits the fan and the Republicans split.  
  
He doesn't even have his family anymore. What I would give to sleep,  
  
and just not wake up. No, I'm not delusional, though I am mildly  
  
stressed. I would give anything to give them a release from their  
  
binds as his, my family. They deserve so much better.  
  
I can feel the sleep clouding my monotone thoughts. I miss Abbey, so much. My wife, the love of my life. If not the first, definitely the  
  
last.  
  
With final consciousness, I whisper..."God Lay Me Down To Sleep..."I feel myself fading before ever getting beyond that.  
  
I wonder if my wish should come true and I don't awaken, will the  
  
Lord keep my soul? If he won't, who will? 


End file.
